Explanation:
On September 30, a spectacular bolide
or fireball meteor surprised
a group of amateur astronomers enjoying dark night skies over
the Oklahoma panhandle's Black Mesa State Park in the Midwestern US.
Flashing past familiar constellations Taurus (top) and Orion,
the extremely bright meteor was captured by a hillside camera
overlooking the 2008
Okie-Tex Star Party.
Astronomy enthusiast Howard Edin reports that he was looking in the
opposite direction at the time, but saw the whole observing
field light up and at first thought someone had turned on their car
headlights.
So far
the sighting of a such a bright
bolide meteor,
produced as a space rock is vaporized hurtling through Earth's atmosphere,
really is
a matter of luck.
But that could change.
Earlier
this week the discovery and follow-up tracking of
tiny asteroid
2008 TC3 allowed astronomers to predict the time
and location of its impact with the atmosphere.
While no ground-based sightings of the fireball seem to have been
reported, this first ever impact prediction was confirmed
by at least some detections of an air burst and bright flash on
October 7th over northern Sudan.